The Return
by Ava Blook
Summary: What happened after the end of the Wanted special, when Lars returned to Earth different? A series of vignettes focused on Lars and Sadie, with Lion and the Off-Colors coming in later. Major spoilers for the Wanted special event, especially the episodes "Off-Colors" and "Lars' Head".
1. Landing

**I am dying to see how the series is going to handle Lars being back on Earth, and just had to try my hand at writing it. This work will update erratically when I have time. I hope you like reading it as much as I liked writing it!**

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The spaceship landed a little after nine a.m. on Sunday, a week after Steven and Lars had been taken from Earth together, a few days since Steven had mysteriously returned – alone. It was impossible to miss the landing, since the ship more or less crashed in the middle of the beach. It was in poor condition, burns and wear marks obvious on the hull, but it was alien and it had arrived in one piece.

Sadie was on the beach in moments, any caution about the Gems that may or may not be outside disregarded. Steven and the Crystal Gems were the only ones to get there faster, and she stopped a few feet behind them, just in case. She was here to see if Lars had made it back to Earth, not to get taken again herself.

She'd wanted to be angry with him, she'd tried to be, but she couldn't manage to get it to last. Every time he'd left her behind for his own interest, even that final time on the ship when he'd run instead of trying to help her, paled in comparison to the fact that he was god-knows-where in space and possibly dead already.

Being angry would have been a whole lot easier.

Instead, she found herself worried. Worried about what had happened to him, what the Gems on the ship had done, about where he'd ended up. Worried about if she'd ever see him again.

The door popped open with a hiss of steam, and a ramp extended down after a moment's delay. Sadie craned for a glance inside, but the door was blocked almost immediately by an impossibly huge . . . Gem? It had to be, right? But none of the other Gems looked like enormous caterpillars.

Behind the enormous Gem came a nervous-looking large red Gem with two sets of arms and eyes, then a Gem split at the waist. There was a pause, then, and Sadie felt her blood freeze in her veins, fearing there was no one else aboard.

But after that pause came a tiny Gem in a puffy dress, and as she descended the platform, Sadie could make out another silhouette behind her. A silhouette of someone she recognized. Someone almost twice her height, with a familiar pouf of hair.

She was running towards the ship before she realized it, feet pounding up the ramp seconds after the last Gem made it to the sand, and with her momentum, the hug she intended to give wound up sending them both to the floor of the spaceship.

Sadie couldn't help but laugh with relief, and she heard a familiar laugh in response. Sadie quickly pushed herself back up, blushing, and extended a hand down for Lars to take.

"Sorry about that, Lars, I'm just glad to see . . . you?"

The hand that took hers was both right and wrong at the same time. It was the right shape, it felt the same as Lar's hand, felt familiar, comfortable. But it was colder, somehow, and in the light coming in through the doorway, it was the wrong color, too: a bright, vibrant pink.

The hand gripped hers tightly, and using it, the figure stood up, revealing the rest of himself in the light, and heaven help her, he looked so familiar and so alien at the same time.

He was Lars – the height, the hair, the proportions and features, he was even wearing the same clothes she'd seen him in last, albeit more torn and dirtied. But the rest, his skin, his hair – pink. Sadie was used to weird skin colors, hell, Steven was pinker than most people, but this color belonged in a box of crayons: "Your Friend, in Alien".

Was he even Lars? The other Gems were able to shapeshift—what if this was just a Gem, shapeshifted to look like him?

Sadie hurriedly dropped his hand and stepped back, trying to avoid being too close to this possible stranger, forgetting about the doorway and the ramp behind. Her foot slipped out from under her, and as she tipped backwards, her hands flailed, hoping to catch the edge of the doorway.

But instead, a hand caught hers and pulled her back upright. The pink Lars lookalike smiled sheepishly.

"Guess I do look pretty startling, huh," he said, nervously rubbing at the back of his head. "Let's get down before you take a real tumble, okay?"

Sadie nodded, not trusting herself to speak. He _sounded_ like Lars, but when had she heard Lars so . . . serious? Caring? Mature?

At the bottom of the ramp, Steven didn't seem to have any qualms about this being Lars, and quickly caught him in a hug and started talking a mile a minute, using words that Sadie only understood half the time.

But Sadie stopped a few feet short of the bottom of the ramp. She wasn't ready, yet, to join in the scene of reuniting happening below, because she wasn't sure if she was really reuniting, yet.

"What happened?" she asked, and Steven stopped talking and the pink Lars turned to look at her, and she kept talking because if she lost the nerve to ask now, a small part of her would always be wondering—

"What happened to you? How did you turn pink, and why, and –are you . . . are you really Lars?"

For a second Sadie thought that time had frozen somehow, the way everyone stood still. But Steven started talking, too fast for her to understand, and anyway all Sadie could focus on was the pink Lars's face as his heart seemed to break.

"Sadie . . ."

"I'm sorry, but I had to ask. All this Gem stuff, I didn't know—"

"Sadie . . . I get it."

"Whuh?"

The pink Lars took a moment to gather his thoughts, and when he spoke up, it was with none of the anger she'd expected the accusation to spark.

"I get it. I'm pink now, and that's definitely not normal, ha. It's a long story—a really long story. A lot has happened, but . . . I'm still Lars, as far as I know. And . . . I'm sorry."

Sadie was catching Lars in a hug before she realized she was moving. Up close, she could see a scar over his left eye that hadn't been there before. What had he been through, out there?

"What the heck are you sorry for? I'm the one that should be apologizing!"

"For running away instead of helping you. I want to be the kind of person that would have helped you instead of getting afraid and running away, and I wasn't, not when you needed it."

"Lars, it's okay!" Sadie pulled back so that Lars could see her face, her sincerity. "I can understand being afraid, and I got out okay anyway. I'm over it. I should have done more to make sure you got off the ship. We all have regrets, and that's okay."

Lars smiled, hesitantly, but it was a genuine smile – Sadie had enough practice to tell.

"Thanks, Sadie. I needed to hear that, I think."

"No problem. Now, what I want to hear is what happened up there – it seems like it was intense!"

"Oh, for sure it was," Lars said. "I may have, haha, died for a little bit there—"

"WHAT?"

"Like I said, it's a long story. And maybe not one to tell on the beach?"

Once Lars mentioned it, Sadie noticed the crowd of Beach City residents now crowded onto the beach to gawk at the alien spaceship, or the new Gems, and a couple at Lars himself.

"Sure," Sadie said. "I don't think anyone will mind me closing up the Big Donut today—we could go back to my place and you can tell me the whole thing."

Lars smiled, wider this time.

"Yeah, that—that sounds nice."


	2. Strawberry Frosted

**More about Lars returning to Earth after Wanted, now feat. the Cool Kids.**

 **If you like it, please be sure to follow the story and leave a comment!**

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Somewhere along the way, Beach City wound up getting used to the weird stunts of the Crystal Gems and everything that came with them. So, while a spaceship crashing on the beach would have shut down the town for weeks elsewhere, the boardwalk of Beach City was up and running like nothing was out of the ordinary the very next day. After all, _this_ spaceship hadn't managed to do any property damage, and no one had been told to evacuate.

Sadie had told Lars he should take the day off from the Big Donut – "I've been handling it just fine on my own, and you just got back from _space_ ; you can take some time to get adjusted, Lars!"—but the last thing Lars wanted to do now was to sit around his empty house, or casually head to Steven's place, where the Off-Colors were staying for the time being. He'd spent the past few days in a nonstop cycle of running and hiding, and if he just _stopped_ now, there was a chance he might not ever get back to work at all.

So instead, Lars showed up at the employee entrance of the Big Donut at 6:30 am to help Sadie open.

"So, you decided to come in anyway?" Sadie asked, halfway through unlocking the door when Lars arrived.

"Yeah," he said. "It's weird, but I kind of missed this place."

"What, they don't have some kind of cool, futuristic donut place for aliens in space?"

"I wish," Lars laughed. "Gems don't eat, so no neat alien donut shops."

Sadie shot Lars a worried look before she headed inside the Big Donut. Lars had told her the basics of what had gone on since she'd last seen him, but there were details he was glossing over—she knew, and she didn't like it, but she wasn't ready to push him about it, either.

Lars was a bit surprised to find he'd forgotten some of the opening routine, which had been drilled into his head over the months and month of working here so thoroughly that he could have sworn he could do it in his sleep. It was funny, almost, how a week away from Earth had made such a big part of his life seem so trivial that he'd forgotten.

Sadie seemed to notice, and took over the more complicated tasks without saying anything—opening the register and starting up the coffee machines while Lars stocked the display with the day's donuts. Still, he was out of practice, and the case was only half filled when 7 am came.

"Lars, I'm gonna open the doors, okay?" Sadie called from the front of the store as Lars headed to the back with an empty tray.

"Go ahead," he called back, setting the empty tray down on a stack of other trays and reaching for the next.

Only a few moments after Sadie flicked the open sign on, the door swung open, jingling the little bell hanging above. Lars figured he was going to have to really pick up the pace filling the donut display if people were coming in this early.

"Hey, Sadie. We heard Lars got back to Earth or whatever yesterday."

"From what Onion's been saying, the whole thing was pretty intense, and he didn't even make it into space. Figured it didn't get any cooler out of the atmosphere."

"We wanted to check in and see if he's okay – is he here today?"

Even a week in space couldn't make Lars forget the sound of the cool kids' voices: Buck Dewey, and Sour Cream, and Jenny Pizza—and now here they were, asking after Lars. Lars, who was now even weirder than before, with his pink skin and his wormhole hair.

For a moment, Lars felt frozen with panic. What would they think of him? What if he became a laughingstock to them, a big joke?

He could hear Sadie in the front room already saying some kind of excuse, covering for him so he could stay in the back.

But hiding in the backroom of the Big Donut because he was afraid what people would think? That was the sort of thing he had never wanted to do again. He had fought killer robots, helped a bunch of weird aliens steal and pilot a spaceship, and _died_. He wasn't going to cower in the backroom after all of that!

Instead, he gripped the tray a little bit harder and walked out into the front room.

"Hey, guys," he said, glancing at them before he started moving donuts into the display. They seemed taken by surprise by his appearance; even in Beach City, suddenly being bright pink was highly unusual. Lars turned his attention to the donuts instead, waiting for their response. Of all flavors to be stocking _now_ , of course he'd picked strawberry-frosted, the pink icing pretty much the same color as his skin now.

"Dude, you're _pink_ ," Sour Cream said, sounding more awestruck than alarmed. That was a good start, at least.

"Is this some kind of alien makeover thing? Because if so, I'd try it," Jenny said. "Pink is a good look on you, Lars."

"Thanks," Lars said, losing his concentration and accidentally catching a bit of strawberry icing on his finger. He glanced at it before wiping it off on his apron, and he could barely see where the icing ended and his finger began.

He looked up to see that the cool kids all seemed to have noticed this happening, too.

"Well, I'd say your new look is pretty _sweet_ ," Buck said, one corner of his mouth edging upwards into a smile.

"Buck, oh my God, that's the worst pun I've ever heard!" Jenny cried out, but Lars returned Buck's smile with one of his own.

"Heh, I guess you could say it is pretty _ice_. Like icing . . ." Lars trailed off, nervous by habit.

"Ha! I get it," Sour Cream said.

"Lars, don't encourage him like that! Now I'm gonna be hearing puns from him for days," Jenny whined, but it was playful.

"That must be pretty . . . _punbearable_ ," Sadie said, and Lars couldn't help but laugh. Sour Cream wound up laughing too, while Jenny faked a scowl that did a bad job hiding her creeping smile.

"Listen, I gotta get back to work, but I'm glad Lars is feeling okay enough to be making terrible puns," Jenny said, heading for the door. "I'll see you guys later, okay?"

"Yeah, I should go too, but we should totally hang sometime," Sour Cream said. "Maybe we can hold a potluck where you don't get abducted?"

"Yeah—yeah, that sounds good!" Lars said.

"Bingo bongo," Buck said, shooting Lars finger guns as he exited the Big Donut.

And then the cool kids were gone, as suddenly as they'd come.

"Lars!" Sadie said, sweeping him into a hug. "That was incredible! You just—talked to them! Like they were just people!"

"Heh, it's nothing," Lars replied, sheepish.

"Nothing? Like, two weeks ago, you could barely look at them!"

"Guess it's been a long two weeks," Lars said, putting the last of the strawberry iced donuts into the case. He stood up to find Sadie looking at him with an expression it took him a moment to place: concern, like she was worried about him.

"Hey, it's fine," he reassured her. "And . . . that was pretty cool."

Sadie smiled, then.

"They're really nice, and fun to be around. I'm glad you're willing to give them a chance now, Lars."

"Yeah. Feels good to be taking a chance," Lars said. And it _did_. What had he been so worried about, before? He doubted the cool kids could be mean to anybody if they tried. Why had it taken dying on an alien planet to be able to see that?

Lars picked up the empty doughnut tray and carried it to the back. A smudge of pink icing from the edge of the tray rubbed onto his palm as he set the tray down on the stack, and he smiled for a second before wiping it off this time. A sweet new look was the least of what he'd gotten in space.


	3. Lion and Lars

**Hi everyone! Yikes, I didn't realize it had been a month since I updated! I was finishing up the first draft of a longer Voltron fic, but now I've got a free queue for fic. More notes at the bottom of the fic if you care to read em. For now, on to the chapter!**

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Lars knocked on the door to Steven's house a bit nervously. He'd been there before, but that was after Steven had possessed him and walked his body in without his awareness—he had been inside, but never really entered.

"Lars! You're here!" Steven called, and Lars could see him scrambling to open the door through the screen.

"Sure I am," Lars said. "You said there was someone you wanted me to meet?"

Lars didn't have a clue who would be at Steven's house that he'd need to meet; the Off-Colors were staying here, but he already knew them all, and he'd met the Crystal Gems before.

"I wanted you to meet Lion!" Steven beamed, gesturing up to the loft above them, where sure enough, there was a sleeping lion. A lion in a very familiar shade of pink.

"Steven, is this the lion you were talking about on Homeworld? The one with the-" Lars gestured at his own hair, still unsure how exactly to describe exactly what it was now.

"Yep!" Steven said cheerfully. "I don't know anyone else that's, well, been through the same stuff, and since Lion has, I figured you could learn some things from him!"

Lars looked up at Lion, who was sprawled across the floor at the foot of Steven's bed, one back leg twitching in his sleep.

"Steven, he's a lion. He can't _talk_ , can he?"

"No," Steven said, obviously growing a bit dejected. "Or at least if he can talk, he hasn't talked to me yet."

"So what am I supposed to learn from him if he can't talk? _You_ know about all his powers and stuff, right? Why don't you just teach me instead?"

"It's not that simple," Steven sighed. "Lion's always doing things I don't know he can, and even the stuff I do know about, I don't know how he does it. If I tried to tell you about it, I'd probably wind up leaving out something I didn't know was important, or explaining it the wrong way, or something. Lion can't tell you how he does any of this stuff, but I figured you'd probably have a better chance learning it by watching him do it than listening to me tell you about it."

Steven might have a point there. He was a great kid, but not always the best at explaining things. Lars took another look at Lion, at the fur the same shade of pink as his own skin, the mane the same candyfloss color. If there really was no one else on Earth the same as the two of them, he had to give it a try, right?

"Steven, he's asleep," Lars said. Steven, recognizing it as a concession, perked back up.

"Yeah, he naps a lot, but I'm sure he's gonna wake up soon! Wait, there's something we can try, give me a sec!"

Steven pulled away from Lars and ran to the kitchen, and Lars took the chance to walk further into the living room. Lion seemed pretty dead to the world. If he learned nothing else here, at least Lars was pretty sure he'd still be able to sleep if he wanted to. He didn't _need_ sleep anymore, but sometimes it was nice to just block everything out for a few hours. Nice to know he hadn't lost the ability to do it.

"Steven!" a third voice called. Lars turned to see the Crystal Gems emerging from a glowing door in the rock wall, and honestly, if he hadn't seen all kinds of stuff like it on Homeworld already, he'd be freaking out a bit right now.

"Steven are you ready for the mission – oh, hello Lars!" Pearl called, noticing the teen in the living room only at the end of her sentence. Lars nodded in recognition, but didn't talk – Pearl seemed to be a Gem in a hurry right now.

"Oh shoot!" Steven said, a box of those ridiculous Lion Lickers in his hands. "I just invited Lars over! Can't it wait like, an hour?"

"Nope," Garnet said, and Steven sighed. He stuck the box back into the freezer and began walking towards the launch pad.

"Wait, where are you going?" Lars asked, confused.

"On a Gem mission," Steven sighed. "We gotta stabilize some Gem wreckage in the jungle before it crashes with enough force to cause an earthquake. I'm not sure why we're doing it right now though, I thought it was safe for another couple days?"

The last question was directed at the Gems more than it was at Lars.

"Yes, well, we may have been a bit less careful disrupting the wreckage to pull the ship out than I thought," Pearl said. "We were very worried about you, Steven."

Her voice sounded so much like his mother's had, when he'd first made it back to Earth. Quiet and achingly full of sadness.

"So should I come back another day?" Lars asked.

"If you want to, I guess, but this should be pretty quick. You can just, um, sit on the couch and wait! We'll be back really soon." Steven smiled anxiously and patted Lars's shoulder on his way to the warp pad. Before Lars could even figure out what to say to that, the Gems were gone.

"Well, that just happened," Lars said, still trying to figure out how he'd come to be in Steven's living room when Steven wasn't there but a lion was.

Speaking of the lion, Lars took another look up to the loft, where sure enough, Lion was lying in the same position.

But his eyes were open now.

In a flash, Lion jumped down from the loft and landed in front of Lars, eying the teen in what seemed like a curious manner.

"Gah! Geez, don't do that to a guy!" Lars complained. Lion just leaned forward to sniff at him, then sat back on his hind legs and continued eying him.

"Heh, I guess you're a lot like a cat, huh? I guess technically lions _are_ cats. Dunno what Steven was thinking I'd be able to learn from a big fuzzball like you."

Lars reached forward to attempt petting Lion, but as he did, Lion moved faster than he thought was possible and quickly grabbed Lars's shirt collar in his teeth, lifting the teen off the ground as he startled.

"Hey! Put me down!" Lars protested, but Lion swung his head to the side, throwing Lars roughly onto Lion's own back, where Lars clung for dear life. The second Lars seemed to be getting some balance, Lion roared, and something about the roar struck a nerve deep inside Lars. He couldn't put it in words, but some part of him was almost _resonating_ with the roar.

Lars was so busy being confused by this that he didn't notice the glowing pink portal that Lion had opened until the two were already through it.

The place where Lars now found himself was like a place from a kid's storybook, or a dream. It was an enormous field of strawberry plants— _huge_ strawberry plants. In between the enormous leaves, Lars could see flashes and glints of other colors reflecting the sunlight: swords, spears, an enormous mace.

"What _is_ this place?" Lars asked Lion, who only began running through the field. This time, Lars could tell Lion was about to roar a split second before he did: that strange buzzing, pulling, _singing_ sensation fizzled in his core as Lion roared again, and this time Lars watched as a portal sprang into existence in the direction Lion had roared.

 _This_ was the kind of thing Lion could do? Was this a power Lars could learn somehow? And if so, how? There was no noise a human could make with the same power as a lion's roar.

Lars watched in rapt attention as Lion opened a handful more portals to incredible locations (including the island where he and Steven and Sadie had been 'stranded' for some time, where he swore he saw a person made of watermelon), finally portalling the two of them back to Beach City.

Several hundred meters from the shore.

Lars flinched and covered his face with his arms, bracing for the impact of salt water, but it never came. Lion continued running, and Lars opened his eyes to see what the deal was.

They were still far from the shore. And Lion was still running. On top of the water.

"You've gotta be kidding me!" Lars cried. "You can freaking _walk on water_ and Steven didn't think to even mention it?"

With the pace Lion was running, the two reached the shore quickly, and Lion plopped down onto the sand. Lars took the opportunity to slide off Lion's back and onto the sand before Lion could decide to drag him through another portal and stay there instead, but he didn't head home yet.

Steven had been right. Lars wanted desperately to learn how to do the incredible things that Lion was able to do. He'd been useful mostly as one end of a doorway so far; he wanted to be able to be helpful even when Steven wasn't there to access his hair-dimension.

Lion blinked at Lars, looking at the teen expectantly.

"What?" Lars asked.

Lion turned his head to look out at the ocean, in the direction they'd just come from. Where Lion had just run on top of the water.

Did he want Lars to try it, too?

Lars glanced around the beach—old habits die hard, and being self-conscious was a tough one to break. The sun was beginning to set, and there was hardly anyone around. No one seemed to have noticed Lion arriving, either. Even if Lars made a spectacle of himself, there was no one around to gawk.

"Worth a try, I guess," Lars said, walking nervously toward the edge of the water. He placed one foot forward, as if he was just taking another step, and cautiously brought it down.

His foot slipped below the surface of the water, as anyone else would have expected it to, and Lars stumbled back as seawater soaked through his shoe and into his sock. Homeworld had some nasty things to offer, but wearing a cold, wet sock was still extremely unpleasant.

Lars heard shuffling in the sand beside him, and Lion came to stand next to him. Lion fixed his gaze on Lars for a few moments, and then walked forward to the edge of the water and carefully dipped a paw in. It, too, breached the surface of the water and got wet. Lion backed up and shook the water off of his paw, then took off running without warning, bounding straight for the water, and this time he stayed on the surface. Lion ran in a small circle before coming back into shore, and only a moment after Lion's feet hit the shore, Lars could feel his nose digging into Lars's back, pushing him towards the water.

"So, what? I just . . . gotta go fast?" Lars asked. Lion nudged his back again.

"Okay," Lars said, shifting into a running position. "Let's try this again."

Lars took off for the water, taking a few running strides before he reached the waterline again, and he forced himself not to flinch or alter his pace as he reached the water that should have slowed him.

Instead, he was able to keep running, the waves underneath his feet. The feeling of running on water was strange—the ground was constantly shifting, and there was so much give to the surface, like walking on the top of one of those foam pits at a gymnastics studio. It was surreal, and Lars had to force himself to concentrate on keeping his legs moving instead of on the feeling of the surface of the water. He had reached a deeper part of the water, now, and it would be pretty bad if he fell in and had to swim back to shore.

With that thought, Lars turned and started running back towards the shore, carving a wide arc. Back on the beach, Lion was watching him with what he'd call satisfaction, if he had to guess at a lion's emotions.

He was really doing this. _He was running on water._

"LARS!" came a gleeful shout from the beach, and Lars stumbled and splashed into the water—thankfully shallow, only a foot or so deep. He turned to see Steven rushing down to the water from the direction of the Temple, wearing a grin that threatened to split his face in half.

Lars got to his feet and made it to shore by the time Steven reached him and swept him into a practically bone-crushing hug.

"Oh, Lars! I knew you'd be able to learn something!" Steven said, and Lars couldn't help but smile and feel a little proud of himself. After all, he'd just been able to do something that, as far as he knew, no other human had ever accomplished.

"So what else did he show you? Did you learn anything else?" Steven asked, pulling back to watch Lars's face, glee clearly spread across his own. Lars nervously ruffled his hair. He could feel the soft heat of a blush spreading across his face, though he wasn't sure if it was visible given how pink the rest of him already was.

"Well, he did make a whole bunch of portals by roaring," Lars said. "But I think it's gonna take me a while to figure that one out."

"Don't worry! I know you'll be able to figure it out!" Steven beamed.

"Yeah," Lars said. He didn't doubt the younger boy; this was just the start of what he'd be able to do, he was certain of it.

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 **Just wanted to give a heads up that there's a good chance that this fic won't update in the month of July-I'm giving myself that month to write out a bunch of shorter fics in fandoms I don't usually write for that I've been thinking of for a while. If you haven't seen fic for another one of your fandoms among my fics yet, maybe keep an eye out: I'll be writing for Miraculous Ladybug for the first time, and it'll likely be the first time I post Voltron fic. I might start messing around with Animorphs again too, who knows?**

 **Anyway, the next update should be a pretty big one about Lars getting off of Homeworld and how that happened, so definitely follow the story if that interests you! Also coming up we have Lars and Sadie discussing immortality, the Off-Colors finding their place on Earth, and Lars learning how to make portals!**


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